Carey Mulligan, Mary J. Blige Earn Their Oscar Buzz in Mudbound

The Oscar buzz was palpable at the New York Film Festival screening of Mudbound last night at Alice Tully Hall, where a perfect storm of producers, actors, and one highly regarded director converged to release this much-anticipated film that tackles more than a handful of pressing issues.

Adapted from the novel by the same name by Hillary Jordan, Mudbound is a period piece set in 1940s rural Mississippi that tactfully draws us just far enough away from America’s current state of affairs while still managing to tackle several relevant hurdles we still face, including racism, sexism, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The film stars Carey Mulligan, who admitted to us that she had been a fan of the film’s director, Dee Rees, since her first breakout hit, Pariah, in 2011.

“Dee was my real draw, and the thing I was excited about most for this project,” Mulligan, in a red Giambattista Valli gown and Repossi jewels, told Vogue before the screening. “I had seen Pariah, and thought it was such a strong film, so I thought, ‘Whatever she does next is going to be such a strong film again, and I want to be in it.’ I spent a lot of time cuddling with Mary J. Blige, too, so I’ll take that away until the day I die.”

Each of the cast members was selected specifically by Rees, who remained laser-focused on exactly whom she wanted to play each role. This included Jason Clark, who first met the director through his iPhone’s FaceTime in the back of a car; Mary J. Blige, who, Rees said, brought an “outer reserve and inner vulnerability” to her character; and Mulligan, who struck a unique duality as the film’s lead protagonist. “I just love different voices and faces,” Rees told us. “For each of these roles, I needed someone who embodied the spirit of it. In Carey’s case, I needed a person to play both civilized and farm wife, and she just fit that perfectly.”

Off the red carpet, the cast reminisced on their time spent filming in New Orleans, where the set included an apropos fleet of sprinklers to create mud, and, shockingly, a snake wrangler. “It was hot, tropical, and we were two hours away on an old sugar plantation full of big cottonmouth snakes,” Clark recalled. “This is a massively big, epic film, and it could have fallen apart and shrunk at any point in time. It takes a lot of intelligence and drive and commitment and ability to take what Dee has pulled off.”